A 911 operator has been suspended after allegedly hanging up on a Tops supermarket worker who called during the deadly Buffalo shooting on Saturday.
WGRZ reports Latisha Rogers, an assistant office manager at the Tops Friendly Market in Buffalo, N.Y., called 911 from her cell phone to say she could hear gunshots at the grocery store.
“I called 911, I go through the whole operator and everything, the dispatcher comes on and I’m whispering to her and I said ‘Miss, please send help to 1275 Jefferson there is a shooter in the store,’” Rogers said. “She proceeded in a very nasty tone and says ‘I can’t hear you, why are you whispering, you don’t have to whisper, they can’t hear you,’ so I continued to whisper and I said ‘Ma’am he’s still in the store, he’s still shooting! I’m scared for my life, please send help.’ Out of nervousness, my phone fell out of my hand, she said something I couldn’t make out, and then the phone hung up.”
The emergency dispatcher has been placed on paid administrative leave, according to the New York Times, and will face a disciplinary hearing later this month.
Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz said the dispatcher, who had been on the job for eight years, is expected to be fired. Erie County operates the Department of Central Police Services 911 Call Center in downtown Buffalo that received Rogers’ call.
“It was completely unacceptable,” Poloncarz said Wednesday.
Poloncarz added that the dispatcher’s actions “had no bearing on the dispatching of the call,” according to the Daily Beast. Buffalo police said officers arrived at the store one minute after the first 911 call received.
Ten people were killed Saturday when alleged gunman Payton Gendron opened fire Saturday in what authorities are investigating as a racially-motivated hate crime. Gendron, 18, allegedly drove about 200 miles from his Broome County home in Conklin, N.Y., to target shoppers and workers at the Buffalo Tops store in a predominantly Black neighborhood. Eleven of the 13 people he shot were Black; among the ten who died were Roberta Drury, 32, a former Cicero-North Syracuse High School student, and Andre “Drew” Mackniel Sr., 53, who has family in Syracuse and Auburn.
A 180-page document allegedly posted online by Gendron referenced the “Great Replacement Theory” and said he planned to shoot as many Black people as he could, terrorizing non-white, non-Christian people to leave the U.S. The manifesto also said he researched major Upstate New York cities to find the highest Black population; the zip code where the shooting occurred is 78% Black.
Gendron also allegedly posted hundreds of messages on Discord, an online messaging board, suggesting he considered targeting Destiny USA in Syracuse. The mall’s zip code is 29% Black, according to the U.S. Census.
“I’ll have to see if I can find a higher black population density, if not southern Syracuse is the place,” he reportedly wrote. “Gotta check out Syracuse mall.”
Gendron is due back in court Thursday as authorities, including the FBI, continue to investigate the possibility of hate crime and terrorism charges.
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